First-year Tandon student contributes to prize-winning project at hackathon
The game aims to boost debate skills and confidence in young students
When Brown University advertised a student-run hackathon with an arcade theme during the first weekend of February, it looked like a good time to Hesham Zia, a Tandon mechanical engineering major. A first-year student, he hadn’t yet had the chance to participate in a university-level hackathon, and once he realized that a group of friends from the College of Arts and Science were planning to drive to Rhode Island, he enthusiastically signed on.
Making a hotel reservation while en route, the group arrived just four hours before the event’s official start time, and by the end of a packed weekend of workshops, brainstorming, and coding, Zia and his teammates (Maheen Rassell, Alfardil Alam, Abdul Mendahawi) had come up with a game they dubbed “Paw & Order,” a play on the popular televised legal drama Law & Order.
The quartet created a colorful, interactive courtroom presided over by a feline judge. Two players enter and are assigned to take sides on a random question (Should candy be allowed in the lunchroom of your school, for example). Each player prepares a one-minute verbal argument, which is then analyzed for clarity and strength using Open AI.
“We realized that many children struggle to express themselves and articulate their perspectives, so we aimed to create a fun, stress-free environment that would help them build conversational skills and confidence,” Zia explains. “And while we tailored our questions to the elementary-school level, we can foresee expanding it to other audiences, such as high school students preparing for debate competitions.”
The team employed JavaScript for front-end development and MongoDB, an easy-to-use cloud database service for the back end. When the judges finished deliberating, Paw & Order was deemed the winner in the “Best Use of MongoDB” category. (NYU CAS teams also took home prizes in the categories of “Best Consumer-Driven Patient Safety Technology” and “Best Use of AWS.”)
“It was our first time using MongoDB, so we’re proud to be recognized,” Zia says. “It was an exhausting weekend, but we learned a lot about the importance of having a solid idea while being able to pivot. We foresee adding more customization options, allowing for rebuttals, and making the feedback more constructive, so we hope Hack@Brown is just the first competition of many. Maybe InnoVention could be next.”
